Tag: Aspergers

They say – those notorious sayers of supposed truth and wisdom, whoever they may be – that appearances can be deceptive.

To anyone on the autistic spectrum, this is not news – it is a way of life. Nothing is rarely – if ever – as it seems to us. So many games; so many hidden meanings; passive-aggressiveness; sarcasm; nuance in the look, the body language, and us… A blunted hammer in a world of needles and scalpels.

I fear for my grip on the life I have. It is slipping slowly, surely, away from me, piece by piece. My partner is as distant now as he was when he lived 150 miles away, and if he should go, the other dominoes will follow – our house, our dog, my ability to face work, my strength to fight through University studies.

And as always, I feel helpless. I don’t know what to do about it. I want, so desperately, for him to understand that, and move toward me in our stand-off, but… Nothing. Just silence.

All my troubles seemed so far away. But distance is all subjective. They felt so far away because my partner and I had enjoyed one good evening in each other’s company. It made the world of difference.

But it didn’t last. It never lasts. I embarked on what was actually an incredibly tough day, with little to no support from anyone around me – least of all him. Continue reading “Yesterday”→

Which is veeeeeeery different to “independence”, in that I am probably, most likely, almost surely mired in dependence on my partner.

And he has gone away for three days with work, which shouldn’t be a big deal to me, but is.

Because it means my routines have changed. It means my environment has changed; emptied of his sounds and presence. And it means my responsibilities have changed, too. I now have sole charge of our dog, and must now try to remember and accomplish all of the things that are usually his job to remember and accomplish.

In short, I must, for these three days, be two people. Which is difficult when, on most days, I barely feel like one….

There is something I understand as being quite common amongst autistic individuals: namely, the feeling of being openly ignored. Looked straight past. In discussions, I have heard it suggested that we do not, perhaps, have a natural presence, nor natural body language and so are overridden in turn. Which is painful realisation to make, and one that was plunged home to me yesterday, at a doctor’s appointment.

It was, to be frank, actually a therapy appointment, which made it sting all the more that the experience I had there was not befitting of a bastion of dependency, trustworthiness and professionalism.

My appointment was at 9.30am and I arrived ten minutes early, having checked the SMS and letter five times to make sure I had the day, date, time and place correct. The Receptionist was pleasant and said she’d inform them of my arrival. I took my place in the waiting room.

At 9.35am, someone who I was fairly sure was the gentleman I had seen at my last appointment, poked his head out of a door and scanned the waiting room – but not in my direction. Ten full minutes later, at a quarter-to-ten, he walked past me, wearing his coat, and leaves the building.

Between my uncertainty of it being the gentleman I required, and my inability to process quickly enough (because, I mean, it surely couldn’t be him – I had an appointment!) I did not speak out and stop him, meaning all I could do was go back to Reception and confirm I did, indeed, have an appointment. The lady assured me I did and I had to, embarrassingly, explain that I had just watched the man walk right by me, missing me completely sitting in full view, and leave. Three people spent thirty minutes trying to contact him, until they sent the Practice Manager to apologise to me and promise a rearrangement.

I was, and am, livid.

I spend enough of my daily life feeling downtrodden, dismissed and downright invisible and now, even in an institution supposed to be helping me with those issues, they manage to find a way to heap on the misery. My distrust of such services is currently resolute.

In order to make myself feel better, though, I have drafted an incredibly strongly-worded letter to the Manager. Who said I can’t express myself – hmph!?

I’m not sure why all of my blog titles come to me as a song title, but there you have it. Enjoy this Nat King Cole classic.

The point of it, though… Well these last few weeks have been hard – personally, yes, but also, and mostly as a result of which, within my relationship, too.

“Turbulent”.

It seems, at every turn, another of my autistic traits comes under the microscope – or is placed on trial, depending on the context – and I find myself arguing in defence of it; a defence most often founded on the “but I can’t help it” principle. It holds little sway usually and it becomes apparent to me just what my poor partner is truly faced with.

On the face of it, at least, it appears that I am asking for a free pass to be infinitely selfish, unwaveringly rude and duly entitled to rant, rave, sulk and storm out as I see fit, all at the expense of his own feelings and any notion that he might be right and I, wrong. In truth, though, this is, of course, never the intention. In my own mind – and with my limited self-knowledge – I can piece together exactly how autistic traits lead me astray and into a dead-end minefield from which I cannot return.

To begin, I fatally misunderstand something he has said – because I have taken him too literally, and it doesn’t compute. Then I expend my energy on trying to make him see why I would take it literally. Usually I am adamant it could not be taken any other way. As such, it is either black or white. He either meant it the way I took it, or he didn’t mean it that in which case he shouldn’t have said it at all. There is, despite his protestations, never a shade of grey in my sights, in which he could have, of course, meant it differently to how I took it.

Once he has not backed down, though, or seen where I am coming from and why, then I am simply immovable from my position until he humbles himself and attempts to repair communications and my feelings – such is my stubbornness. Add to this a perfectionist level of expectation, and it is little wonder he feels he can never win.

That said, there are ways and means to combat this system, and if I can figure out how I work and what I need and don’t need, then so can he. Though he shouldn’t really need to, as he has been told multiple times.

But there, in a nutshell example, is evidence of how difficult I, personally, can be to live with. I am lucky to have someone in my life at all, and though, at the moment, he is not quite capable of supporting me through my condition – and especially not in episodes like the above example – it is enough for me that someone wants to try.